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Message: <blockquote data-quote="(un)reason" data-source="post: 5438626" data-attributes="member: 27780">Dragon Magazine Issue 219: July 1995part 7/8Libram X makes evil doubles sympathetic. Dragonmirth needs to buy better equipment. Swordplay kills the wrong stupid movie star. Yamara ends really sweetly. All together now. Awwwwwww. Through the looking glass: The reorganisations begin with the wrapping up of minis reviews. Time for Robert to bid us farewell. Thank you to Roger Moore for giving him a chance in the first place, thanks to all the companies that sent him free stuff, and thank you to all the people who read the column and wrote in. No particular thanks for the current management though, I'm fairly sure it was their decision to end this relationship, not his. After all, if you're going to retrench and focus on your core audience, something like this would be the first thing deemed unneeded. The number of minis reviewed is less than usual as well. He's certainly not getting to go out with a bang. A page is devoted to a starter castle, which of course is a fairly large piece of work requiring some serious assembly work. This means it doesn't quite fit it's beginners label, despite being high quality. A trio of fairly generic elf archers. They'll drop into most games without too much trouble. Ral partha continue to take the official orders for the big games, with a bullette and a bone gnawer in various states of transformation, and a horse headed centaur, from shadowrun, apparently. All are pretty good as usual. You can see why companies keep coming back to them. And finally, there's a female orc riding a turtle, which is from Earthdawn. And yet another elf wizard. They're in no danger of being short of troops any time soon. And that's the end of that. Not a particularly impressive way to go out. Who'll be next on the chopping block, I wonder. TSR Previews: The Forgotten realms is back to taking the lions share of the supplements. The secret of spiderhaunt carries on the Mourndale adventures. Randal Morn is missing. Guess who's responsible, and where they're hiding out. Volo is nearby, giving his own distinctive guide to Cormyr. Shame we can't pin the blame on him. And we are reminded once again that as prolific as their schedule is, there are even more books that don't appear here, as we find out they're up to book 10(! Why didn't they mention 2-9?) of the Super Harpers series. Masquerades sees us return to the doings of Alias and co. Man, this is getting impossible to keep track of. Planescape gets Harbinger house, another extradimensional place full of weird set-pieces in the vein of Baba yaga's hut. This is one I've used to reasonable success, and it confounds mapping nicely while still being easy for the DM to keep track of where the players are. This is the dark side of seeking godhood. Ravenloft sees Van Richten try and study the Vistani. Not an easy task, and one likely to result in half-truths and curses upon the examiner. But hey, he's already cursed. Still, beware lack of objectivity. Mystara gets Dragonking of Mystara by Thorannin Gunnarsson. Dragons are never easy to negotiate with, and trying to get profit out of them is like getting blood from a stone. When there's a whole bunch of manipulative <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /><img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> supposedly on your side, it gets even harder. Still, that's what we need heroes for. Dark sun gets Cinnabar shadows by Lynn Abbey. Yet more developments and dramas under the harsh desert sun as people fight to survive. Some fairly interesting generic stuff too. The second Players option rulebook, Skills and Powers hits. Yet more attempts to make AD&D point buy to limited success. Also ambitious but a bit dodgy is Labyrinth of Madness. Wasn't the 20th anniversary of TSR's founding last year. Unless you're being lawyerly and counting it as the founding of the new TSR, not the old Tactical Studies Rules. Anyway, this is to the Tomb of Horrors what a Jumbo Jet is to a Monster Truck. A meatgrinder and pixelbitcher on a scale large enough to give even 20th level characters months of frustration, years if they play dumb but don't give up and the DM doesn't give any clues. Like getting to immortality twice in basic D&D, if you can win this one fair and square, no help or cheating, then there's pretty much nowhere left to go. It really deserves more nostalgia than it gets. Guess so few people get to 20th level that they can't build the same kind of shared experience as the old convention modules. Blood wars on the other hand, is still escalating with every supplement. This time, the gods get involved. The lady of pain isn't going to be happy if they come into sigil.</blockquote>

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